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Sunday, November 17, 2013

This Thing I'm Working On

Long ago I read a blog written by a woman who lived in northernish California. She was a mother with two children, an attorney with a Big Deal job, a reader, and homeowner who somehow also found time to cook lovely meals, plan beautiful, enriching family vacations, and quilt. It's the last of these that instilled in me vast feelings of awe. Her quilts were astonishingly gorgeous, full of intricate piecework, and produced at a dizzying clip. I always thought that someday I'd follow her example.

420 squares and counting

They look prettier in person, really.

Someday has, kind of, arrived. Years and forever ago I started saving outgrown or used-up jeans with the idea that I'd make a denim patchwork quilt for my son. He'd started to grow out of his little-boy space bedroom theme and I started to imagine that I could quite easily create a sort of Pottery Barn-esque thing that would be both durable and attractive. About a year ago I began cutting patchwork squares, having settled on a 5" square that would yield 4 inches with a half-inch seam allowance around.

Progress on the quilt - even simple squares as it is - is best described as "incremental" even without the lovely piecing I so admired in that much-missed blog. My son has long since given up on seeing it completed but I am making an Old Year's Resolution to complete the work before the calendar turns.

That will be a nice project! I made a quilt once--just crazy squares I sewed together. I got the top made and realized I had no idea how to make it into a quilt. Thankfully my grandmother stepped in. And by then I had broken up with the boyfriend I was making it for. Thankfully. And I kept the quilt. xo

I've been carting around t-shirts from summer camp and regattas for the past 20 years, and I hope one day I'll make them into a quilt. Maybe now that I'm finally learning to use my sewing machine it will become a reality. Good for you for getting started with the process!